March 6th, 2025

Dear President Mills and Provost Dopico,

We write to ask your administration to change course regarding your disproportionate punishment of student speech and protest on the issue of Palestine. Most recently, on March 4th, 2025, 30 law students approached the administrative offices on the 12th floor of Bobst and requested to meet with President Mills. Told they would not be granted a meeting, they participated in a nonviolent sit-in on the 12th floor. Their request for a meeting and the sit-in came after many requests by student groups to speak to President Mills over the last year and half. The law students wanted to discuss a number of issues with the president of their university, including substantive due process concerns regarding the disciplining of students for the exercise of their academic freedom. This too comes after students and faculty at the law school (including the current President of the ACLU) and across the university, as well as many alumni, have voiced concerns about discrimination, transparency, arbitrariness and disproportionate severity in the meting out of sanctions, including the suspension of 13 NYU students in the latest round of disciplinary procedures.

Instead of speaking to these 30 law students in good standing, your administration has treated physical proximity to the President’s office in and of itself as a violation of student conduct rules. During the sit-in, a large number of campus security officers (CSOs) monitored and intimidated the students. Subsequently, students received notices from the Associate Dean of Students informing them that they were restricted from all campus buildings for any purpose other than attending class. The notices also ominously warn students that, in addition to being excluded from their own campus, students are now “under investigation” until further notice. Placing  students under opaque and punitive surveillance is an authoritarian attempt to stamp out any act of protest at NYU.

It is noteworthy that it is Palestine-related student activism that has catalyzed these violations. Again, over the last 18 months, students from across the university have called for disclosure and divestment from the University’s investments in the arms trade with Israel, a country that leading human rights organizations around the world recognize as an apartheid state, and that the International Court of Justice has found to be guilty of an illegal occupation and potentially of genocide. As organizations such as CAIR, MESA, the national AAUP, the NYCLU and Pal Legal, among others have noted, the NYU administration has distinguished itself in criminalizing student activists, and crafting arbitrary policies openly hostile to speech and protest pertaining to Palestine. As we have highlighted in prior correspondence, these excessive punishments have disproportionately impacted students from marginalized communities, including women, LGBTQ students, students of color, Arab, Black, Muslim and Jewish students. And this comes at a time when criminalizing student protest exposes NYU’s student activists to further harm from far-right groups and from Trump’s  executive orders, which violate civil rights law and are in tension with fundamental constitutional principles.

This is a pivotal moment in the national fight for basic civil liberties and principles of racial justice and non-discrimination. The global academic community is watching how your administration responds to its own students’ exercise of free speech and their requests for transparent dialogue with the administration. This poses a profound test of whether NYU – and the individuals in power in the office of the President and Provost – will facilitate or contest this slide towards authoritarianism. Our students have led the way in upholding the university as institutions of learning and debate; we urge the administration to follow their lead. 

Sincerely,

The AAUP Executive Committee